Looney Tunes: Back In Action (2003) Theatrical Cartoon

Daffy Duck FINALLY gets the benefit of the doubt!

I've always been a Daffy Duck fan and always will be, and I'm glad that Warner Bros. have finally dropped this idea of bullying Daffy all the time and actually giving him a bit of sympathy.

But other than that, I can't make head or tail of this film. It's certainly better than Space Jam, but the plot goes off in so many directions that it's hard to keep up. Countless films are spoofed and jokes are poured out, but at the end of it all, you can plainly see that Warner Bros. are stretching for comedy in this politically-correct day and age, a fact even Porky and Speedy are frustrated with.

Classically Looney!

I thought they NAILED this movie!
Imagine: It's 1955, and the Warner Brothers want to make the biggest, craziest animated feature ever. Mix in today's technology to seamlessly mix in live actors, and and you have something pretty darned close to this picture.
Despite a couple slightly-off-color things, like Bugs burping and Taz farting, the style and humor portrayed in Back In Action are right on the mark.
Too bad this picture didn't do well at the box office; I guess today's moviegoers just don't "get it".

Mighty sporting of the little black duck (and frie

At last, those tired spy-movie spoofs are right where they belong--right in the middle of a Looney Tunes cartoon.
I wouldn't have thought that the sensibilities of a seven-minute cartoon could be stretched to feature length as well as they were in this movie. Not even "Space Jam" went for broke as much.
If you tried to diagram the plot for this movie, it would probably look something like several Looney Tunes strung together. It starts out with a harried movie executive (Jenna Elfman) firing and then trying to re-hire Daffy Duck. Then it turns into the story of a security guard (Brendan Fraser) who finds out that his father (two-time James Bonder Timothy Dalton) is, guess what, a secret agent. Then there's the whole subplot about the Acme Corporation's evil leader (Steve Martin) trying to turn the world's human population into monkeys. And the mind still reels at Bugs Bunny and Daffy finding out that the Roswell UFO incident wasn't a fake.
There's probably only one man in Hollywood who could meld these shards of plot into a cartoon/live-action movie, and happily, the Warner Brothers hired him. His name is Joe Dante, who made his name in the '80s directing cartoon-like feature films ("Gremlins", "Innerspace"). Dante has probably been licking his chops at the thought of doing a Bugs/Daffy feature ever since he had them do a cameo in "Gremlins 2", and he has done himself proud. Even though the original Looney Tunes directors have long since gone to comedy heaven, Dante's lead "actors" don't seem to have aged a bit. It's like finding a newly uncovered Marx Brothers movie.
As for the flesh-and-blood performers, Fraser, Elfman and the rest of the movie's live actors, they're admirably good sports, cheerily getting walloped around by hand-drawings. The only sour note is struck by Steve Martin, who overdoes trying to be even more cartoony than the cartoon characters.
In a year filled with typical Hollywood blockbusters, who could have guessed that "Finding Nemo" and this gem would be the year's highlights? Some days, a moviegoer feels like Porky in Wackyland.